Is it time to be honest and critical about ac?

I tried briefly 1.1 and see no major changes, really. The game has a lot of potential. Graphically, is amazing. Physics are nice, although I doubt they are the best (I personally like very much Game Stock Car).

I think the team does a very good job, and tries hard. They deserve the recognition for that.

I also think they appeal to a broad audience, and to all of us who expected netkar 2, well, this is not it, and it does not seem to even be planned to go in that direction. I was expecting a full blown sim, and this is not it. It took a while, but I already accepted it. However, I still have hope that the Devs will at some point make a clear indication of what is their way. So far, they have shown actions: there are more cars and a laser scanned Nordschleife, but we cannot engage first gear before the start.

I have not bought the DLC, by the way. I am not sure that this is the game I want, so it makes no sense to purchase additional content.

Anyway, I wish the Devs the best. It is just not my type of game (at least so far... I really hope at some point it will be).

 

So not having the ignition switch and other switches, not beeing able to engage first gear before start... it's arcade now?

 

Talk about polish, talk about shadow problems... these are present in every recent racing sim.

I don't know about you guys, but RRRE's interface is pretty unusable, GSCE & other rf1 based sims don't support controllers or displays anywhere near as well as AC, and there's a reason people advise installing like 30 copies of rf1 if you want to mod it. There's not really a better sim out there.

 

This all is super basic stuff:

pit functionality:
-no manual pit speed limiter, car is almost controlled by ai on the pits
-no collisions in the pits. Surely this should be server option to turn off/on
-pit menu is really really bad. You can't plan your stop ahead, instead on pitstop it becomes contest who can click around the menus fastest. There should be at least an app that allows you to select if you want to take tires and fuel BEFORE entering pits

racing
-no false starts
-can't even put the car in gear before the start
-complete lack of any kind of car class system. If you want to make a gt3 race you need to remember each individual car and add them separately

replay menu
-can't even sort the list by name/date/car/track/type

extremely archaic online options
-extremely poor online features for server owners and online players:
*need to restart server for every change
*multiclass races have predesigned amount of individual cars (for example if you put 3 gt3 cars on 24 slot server you need to decide how many of which are used instead of allowing players to drive whatever they want as long as there is free slot)
*all cars are piled in the pits which causes completely unnecessary fps issues near the pit straight
*can't force tire choise. As a result only the fastest tires of the cars are used and matter.
*voting lol
*netcode needs work. Too explosive contacts
*afk cars in the grid...
-all this and previous gen sims offer the option to start a multiplayer race from inside the game

Other big issues:
-just plain horrible management of dlc
-skins are basically unusable because the server owner selects them. There is no point at all to download and make skins because only way to use them is to race against the ai
-ai doesn't race/pass and is slow
-the windscreen cracking. Why is this even in the game?
-no adjustable steering lock or brake pressure
-no ffb app

 

Damn, that's a long list, but all valid points.

The only thing you got partially wrong is car class, you can actually select tags in the car selection screen. But it's so unintuative that I don't blame anyone for not noticing it's there.

 

Obviously it's basic, it's been in the game since EA introduced racing:

click 'tag'
click 'gt3'
click 'add visible'

 

One of issues is again lack of almost any communication from Kunos. For example, i bought Elite: Dangerous few months ago, and this one of the first thing a read from the devs on their forum. "As promised in an earlier post we want to provide more visibility on what we have planned for Elite: Dangerous over the coming months. We have some exciting times ahead and while I can’t reveal everything that’s coming we will provide regular updates regarding what we’re working on and what’s coming up. The plans for releases are being finalised now that the team is back from the holidays, but we will share these with you as we progress through the coming year." And they do keep their promise. Now wouldn't it be nice if Kunos once in a while actually talked to us instead of putting hype posts on facebook all the time?

 

Wouldn't off been that long had it been done along the way thru the past year. I've been here for more then a year now and you'd think common sense would preveal and devs would start spending time on these features and they'd pop up one by one when they're done, but in fact. Every feature that has been done, took months in between and it was highly requested first as well. Also it seems as if devs are having the sort of attitude, finally we did the feature end of features, we worked enough on features. Really weird. It's a huge drawback. The community would be so much bigger had this been done right, or if it starts being right now perhaps. Rather sooner then later.

I want to enjoy races in this simulation, with all this new content that is being added. A real race experience. An online championship and organised events. Higher level of immersion. I want to enjoy cars for months, not few days and close the game and move onto the next one. I'm not of that sort of people, many of us are not. A lot of us use the simulator as a platform because we don't have funding to compete in real life racing and then we treat it more as a simulation of real life races, then a game. Perhaps that should be said as well. So, one thing at the time, I really hope they start taking this serious. I would actually like if devs tried some MP themselves. Some MP events. Take two hours out of ur two days and do an event. They might like it, start to appreciate what is being needed for that to be a really immersive experience.

 

Honestly I don't blame them, programming is difficult and bug hunting is time consuming as hell. I've been building V2 of my track for 5 months now and I still haven't gotten it half finished (granted it is 2.5x longer than the Nords). Building and testing takes a lot of time.

We can only hope that the passion for perfection continues at Kunos! I think they'll be able to do it!

 

I know it takes time. It takes so much time because one single person is working on features. And this person that is working on features is also working on few other things including AI. These things seem like simple coding then testing. With DLC being such a huge success maybe someone could be temporarily employed until this is resolved. Waiting another year for not even half the list to be crossed is really pain in the neck. I want to get all of my friends to buy this sim and race with me, but they won't do that, since noone is daring to organize any racing. This can't go for much longer. How long do you think we'll be busy with Nordschleife before we start seeing ghosttowns again..

We needed races, racing support. The racing, the action of compeitition is what keeps the game going. What do you think how LFS survived for 5 years without update. How iRacing which is a level down in graphic-physic has more drivers online then AC has sold licences. Content is just a bonus, not the base. The base is always racing, it always was. What do you think why people complain about AI so much. Because they don't have real good online races, since it's not up properly, so they want to race AI. And then they AI has issues because it's done in this idealistic way of using human physics. No computer can ever beat me on equal terms. And of course for that very reason the only thing you want is to race other racers just like u are, with burning desire to win the battle, win the race, the championship and so on. Driving fast is just the part of the enjoyment. The story that it develops is a lot more interesting.

 

agree with most of the op's points, all except the oculus support and ignition (maybe as an option), a lot of valid points have been raised by others

still love this game though

 

- brake temp / pressure / fade
- tail lights broken on a lot of cars
- Engage 1st gear before start
- Rolling starts? Lots of sportscars in AC, they all use rolling starts...
- MP collisons, cars still pinball off each other
- AFK players on grid
- Some tracks look great(Nords, Monza, Imola), others look dated and half finished(Nurb GP, Mugello, Vallelunga)

+ Good to see flags are in, hopefully they get improved soon
+ Revised penalty system is better, but not perfect
+ Content line up is looking great
+ General physics I think are superb

 

I wonder if we will have this same discussion, let's say, 2 years from now regarding the state of AC - what it is and what it isn't.

If 2 years from AC will show to have made little progress (except new tracks and cars) in features and increases in quality, then it would be a very very sad topic.

So far we are not that far from the starting line (considering v.1.0), so I still have high hopes for a good run for AC and Kunos, there are a lot of things missing sure, but the premise and the chance is here for the taking. It should be at least interesting to see what happens next.

If I were to want/wish something from Kunos is that I hope they have enough money now to hire more people so they can do a better job and more importantly faster. I actually don't want them to remain an small indie dev team, except in their hearts. I want them to not limit themselves and get their hands on some big bucks and big guns, big enough to match their talent and dedication so that they can level up and be even better than what they are now. Kunos needs to grow and mature even more to deliver us that sim dream a lot of us want, if they don't then the dream will not come true, it will remain as an always "could have been".... and that would be very disappointing.

As far as I'm concerned my money's worth was met with the v.1.1 and DLC, but funnily enough, I consider this to have been an easier task than what lies ahead.

I really hope the DLC sales helped them not just to survive, but to actually make them bigger, better and stronger. Show us that in the near future, Kunos, because you know, we need hard facts to believe. It will be systematically harder to improve from now on, but because of that, much sweeter when/if they succeed. When you already have a good foundation and walls and general construction, it's time to make the finishing touches and those are the things that turn good things into great things and great things into amazing things, and that's why is much harder from now on... but far from impossible. The ball is in your court Kunos.

 

OK, what are you talking about?!
You can't engage 1st gear before the start?
That's not true. Just engage 1st gear and click the clutch when the lights go off.
It looks like time is passing by and with it I must say that if you are NOT in a league of some sort it's BETTER NOT to be able to jump start!
What else?
Optimisation. Having pre-second-world-war PC myself I must say that A.C. is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better optimized than many other games. Sure it has some weird glitches which is something the team should work on.
Flags. Yes - they are essential and I was wondering why KS just don't make some lights on the track itself. Something like that - flashing:
This is not a movable object so why not just make it flash from time to time. If you see them - OK, if not - buy glasses.
Anyway it's late..... ... . ..

 

jump starts in pickup racin would be a wreckers dream

 

So are T1, damage and collisions but we manage, kind of...

This is pretty niche feature to be honest. Most ac cars in real life have good brakes that brake fade is super rare. Brake temps generally aren't an issue either but if you really wanted that you'd need to model the brake cooling as well. Lots of coding for really unnoticeable feature

 

Actually, in software engineering the productivity doesn't necessarily scale with the number of devs....


I'm here to rant about the lack of steering wheel lock for cars.


.

 

online?

 

Not if you get to be spectated if you jump start even before half the lights came on..